Re:Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?
by duder_3569 on Saturday February 15, 2020 @12:12PM
(#22336449)
Couldn't agree more! I love working as a Consultant at Red Hat. I do second the "soft" skills mentioned. If you're not a people person, I would say, consulting might not be for you. But it definitely rewards the generalist, jack of all trades, A.D.D. types (speaking for myself).
Re:Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?
by eropple on Saturday February 15, 2020 @11:26AM
(#22336142)
Has the IBM acquisition started to affect you guys yet?
Re:Ask HN: What job can a “jack of all trades” look for?
by cpitman on Sunday February 16, 2020 @07:51PM
(#22344721)
Not really. From our perspective, IBM is a partner (we have lots of those) that we just happen to have alignment on both sides to work more with. That means that on the sales side we spend more time trying to find ways to collaborate. Usually there is this long awkward dance with a partner, where you're not sure who is committed and how committed they are. The IBM acquisition cuts a lot of that out, we know that we're tied together so we have to figure out how to partner together, even if we are two separate companies.
On the actual consulting side, 95%+ of consultants have seen no impact. Those that are being impacted are working on projects that have more IBM products involved. For example, some of my team is starting to work with OpenShift on Z.
As a concrete example, I'm at Red Hat Consulting. We have products that range from RHEL, to Kubernetes/OpenShift, to language runtimes/tools/middleware, and finally to more process focussed transformation. You can specialize, but the more of these you are competent in the more useful you become. I am in more of a leadership role now, and in any one project I am likely involved in all of the above.
The key skills you haven't mentioned are the "Soft" skills: mentoring, client facing leadership, presentation skills, etc. If these are a strength for you, then consulting would be perfect.
Shameless plug at the end, Red Hat is hiring: https://careers-redhat.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchCate...